Midwood; Living Alongside Love in the Afternoon

By ELIZABETH GIDDENS

Published: July 29, 2007

CLEO BABBITT has just tied her doppelg?er, Gwen Munson, to the railroad tracks, the better to seduce Gwen's devoted husband, Will. Aaron Snyder has decided to forgive his girlfriend, Alison, for her stint as a porn star and to believe that she will finally be able to quit using crystal meth.

In other words, it's business as usual in Midwood, Brooklyn. Or, more precisely, in Oakdale, Ill., the fictional town that exists solely in the confines of an unmarked warehouse in that neighborhood -- and in the minds of the approximately three million fans of television's second-longest running soap opera, ''As the World Turns.''

The show has been filmed in New York for its entire 51-year history, and it's safe to say that its souped-up world of sex and chicanery rarely resembles life on the sidewalks outside. But seven years ago the producers moved their studio from Midtown to Midwood, and with a healthy dose of real estate irony, the relocation coincided with a sharp growth in the local Orthodox Jewish community. As Midwood's Orthodox population soared to perhaps three-quarters of the neighborhood, the gap between sidewalk and soap opera became a gulf.

Now, when Oakdale's powerful, scheming blondes and sensitive, square-jawed men step out of the warehouse at Avenue M and East 14th Street, they encounter women wearing very long skirts and men with very long beards.

In Oakdale, your daily life might include falling into a coma, learning that you have an evil twin, or developing amnesia. Your romantic relationships would be more fleeting and unstable than the average high schooler's. Above all, you would be in constant danger of getting kidnapped -- Lily Snyder, for instance, has been kidnapped no fewer than eight times.

Outside the studio, by contrast, all premarital contact between the sexes, even handshakes, is forbidden, and many residents do not allow television into their homes.

Inside the studio, a woman might be hanging from a bell tower by her fingernails, while in the streets outside, the most dramatic scene is the group of elderly people holding court in the kosher Dunkin' Donuts.

''We're strangers in a strange land,'' said Christopher Goutman, the show's executive producer. ''There aren't even any bars around here.''

The studio, which was built in the late 1920s, still features Esther Williams's old pool and more recently provided the setting for ''The Cosby Show.'' But the good citizens of Midwood are oblivious to the past and present dramas unfolding within the high fortress walls, and even close neighbors are unclear about the building's function.

The owner of the Korean deli around the corner was sure that some type of cartoon was being filmed there, and the restaurateur across the street insisted that the warehouse contained ''the news.'' When informed of the building's true purpose, most were still in the dark.

''Soap opera?'' asked a pale 19-year-old who would identify himself only as Tzviyanky. ''Those are the shows where everybody's cheating on each other, right?''

With no break for summer reruns, the show shoots every weekday, and the first lightning round of rehearsals starts at 7 a.m. sharp.

The studios within the warehouse walls are like giant dollhouses, with row upon row of perfectly appointed three-sided rooms. The standard Oakdale sets -- austere boardrooms, dark wood-panel dens, luxurious bedrooms and depressing hospital rooms -- are frequently augmented by the demands of the daily cliffhanger. The crew once had to fabricate a bridge from which a car dangled before dropping, as well as a Scottish castle complete with dungeon, Atlantic City, a Swiss spa, a deserted island and Italy.

This is such stuff as housewives' dreams are made on. But not the housewives pushing prams past the studios on their way to the Chap-A-Nosh restaurant. Nor the girls from the Zionist yeshiva across the street, who swish past hundreds of pounds of oatmeal sitting on the studio's loading dock, completely unaware that it will be transformed into quicksand from which a desperate heroine will soon be struggling to free herself in a most alluring manner.

Photo: Inside, ''As the World Turns.'' Outside, an Orthodox enclave. (Photograph by Ángel Franco/The New York Times)